Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost. Our Venerable Father Moses the Black (c. 400); Our Holy Father Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (430); the Holy Martyr Gebre Michael, Illuminator of Ethiopia (1855)
1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Matthew 19:16-26
Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
When someone is telling us something, it can really help us understand and receive it if we know why. Motive matters. When someone shares with us why what they are saying is so important, we can buy into it instead of tuning out or only half paying attention.
Today’s reading is just the beginning of a long discourse on the resurrection of Christ that continues for 47 more verses and takes up the whole chapter. The occasion of the writing is that some people in the church at Corinth are saying that there is no resurrection of the dead, which has apparently led to fatalistic immoral behavior. The content of St. Paul’s writing is some of the most sublime in all of scripture – a discourse on the resurrection that finds breathtaking expression in Handel’s Messiah.
But it is the brief statement of motive for the writing that must not be missed. It is so important that Paul bookends his discourse with it, in both his first and last sentence (verses 2 and 58): Paul wants to secure the salvation and work of the Corinthian Christians. He wants them to stand / be steadfast. He does not want their believing and labour to be in vain. Though the apostle provides bucket loads of content for their belief, it is in the service of the nature of their belief – he wants it to be the kind of believing that holds fast, through which we are saved by the gospel. With that in mind, he reiterates that the content of his writing is of first importance in his apostolic preaching and that he too is a recipient of it: Christ’s resurrection, and ours with Him, is an imperishable reality, therefore so too is steadfast believing and labouring in the Lord.